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\ BETTER ERA 






BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS DE- 

,1VERED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF 

CINCINNATI ON JUNE 6, 191^, BY 

PRESIDENT CHARLES WILLIAM DABNEY 



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♦A BETTER ERA 



BACCALAUREATE ADDRESS 

BY PRESIDENT CHARLES W. DABNEY 

June 6, 1915 



"Watchman, what of the night? Watchman, what of the night? 
The watchman said. The morning cometh, and also the night; 
if ye will inquire, inquire ye." 

Though our own land is as peaceful as this serene morning, 
it is impossible for us to withhold our sympathies from the 
nations on the other side of the ocean who are in such deep 
distress. Whether we will or not, every human instinct, 
every intellectual interest, fastens our thoughts upon the 
conditions there. It is useless, therefore, for us to try to 
think of other things, while our minds are so absorbed in the 
issue of these events. We may be neutral, but we cannot 
be indifferent. 

During the early months of the war, we were too awe- 
struck to grasp the situation. Now, however, its terrible 
lessons are being driven home to us. Our deepest concern 
as students is that we make our own these fresh lessons of 
history and, especially, that we try to lay hold of new hope 
for human life. Even before the war is over, it is our duty 
to cut fresh channels in which the new tides of spiritual life 
may flow, that out of this collapse of civilization we had 
builded, out of this failure of all agencies which we had 
chosen, we may be led into a new and better era. 

These last ten terrible months have shattered the theories 
of all the philosophers to whom we have been accustomed 
to look for guidance, as completely as they have dissipated 
the dreams of all the poets to whom we went for inspiration. 
Since the world began, men have been thinking and dreaming 
of a better era. A golden age or a millennium of righteous- 

* Reprinted from the University of Cincinnati Record, Vol. XI, No. 3, July, 1915. 



ness has been the goal of the philosophies of all peoples. It 
was the dream of the Hindoos, the prophecy of the Hebrews, 
the hope of the Greeks, the plan of the Romans, and the 
teaching of Christ, But all the philosophies which promised 
to bring in the golden era appear now to have failed us. 

Does this mean that all these philosophies were false? 
By no means. Immanuel Kant, the great prophet of the 
Germans, expressed the most profound thought of his people 
in words of eternal significance. His philosophy was founded 
upon two eternal moral maxims; the universality of the law 
of right, and the supreme consideration due each human 
personality. He taught that no necessity or particular con- 
sideration whatever can be weighed against the univer^sal 
demands of the law of right. What is right for one man in 
one place is right for all men everywhere. 

His second maxim teaches that man is not a thing, but a 
person, and that to treat each man as a person is the first 
law of all human relationships; that each man has his indi- 
vidual rights. The law of right is universal and each man's 
right is supreme. Believing that these doctrines were ap- 
plicable to nations, as well as to individuals, Kant taught 
that the nations of the earth should live together in a federa- 
tion of mutual respect and friendly co-operation, and thus 
establish universal peace. Is Kant's teaching false because 
his people have gone to war ? Never ! As he spoke to the 
German people one hundred and fifty years ago, so he speaks 
to all the nations of the earth today. 

Like the German philosopher, the English poet taught us 
to hope for the "Parliament of Man, — The Federation of the 
World." Tennyson believed "the thoughts of men are 
widened with the process of the suns." 

"We sleep and wake and sleep, but all things move ; 
The Sun flies forward to his brother Sun ; 
The dark Earth follows, wheel'd in her ellipse ; 
And human things returning on themselves 
Move onward, leading up the golden year." 

Such doctrines, hopes, and dreams are inherent in the 
human mind and heart, and are the foundations of all our 
thought of human progress. We cannot uproot them and 
continue to think. We cannot give them up and live. 

In the course of history, man has had many discourage- 
ments in his hopes for universal peace and his plans for 

— 2 — 



human progress, but none, perhaps, more crushing than this 
catastrophe. For this war shows that we do not really 
recognize the universality of Kant's Law of Right, and that 
we are still far, far from the "Federation of the World" of 
Tennyson. If we must judge from the actions of the 
nations today, there is still no law but the law of the jungle, 
and no federation except the federation of cruelty and of hate. 

And what a tremendous shock it was to all our theories ! 
A year ago, many of us could have given a score or more of 
reasons why a great world war could never again occur. 
We believed that there were too many economic and political, 
as well as moral and religious, influences opposed to war. 

Norman Angell had taught us that the idea that war 
promoted the material interests of the conqueror was a 
"Great Illusion," and, therefore, that the bankers and the 
economists would never permit another war. But money 
and business did not prevent war. 

The militarists claimed that great armaments would pre- 
vent war. But we know now that the doctrine, "In time of 
peace, prepare for war," was a horrible falsehood. The 
supposed instruments of law and peace have proved the 
instruments of murder and destruction. 

International socialism also failed. In July, the deputies 
of the societies in the various countries met in Brussels and 
passed the usual resolutions against war, but, in August, 
they were all marching under arms to the fratricidal contest. 

Science, many thought, would certainly prevent war be- 
tween educated nations. Biology had shown the folly of 
destroying the best of the nations, the seed-corn of the future. 
But science, too, sold herself to militarism and became its 
willing servant in making explosives for destroying this 
seed-corn. 

Sad, indeed, was the failure of the peace societies. We 
did not expect much from their social meetings held in mag- 
nificent palaces, but some of us had hoped that great good 
would result from international peace tribunals and courts 
of arbitration. Although the peace societies were meeting in 
Switzerland at the time the armies were mobihzing, they had 
no more influence upon the nations rushing into war than 
the twittering sparrows have upon the railway trains dash- 
ing through the forests. 

— 3 — 



The statesmen of some of the nations labored to prevent 
war, but they, too, failed. Diplomacy, which was always 
looked upon as the trusted watchman of peace, became in 
those last days the willing tool of the war makers. 

Saddest of all, Christianity, founded by the Prince of 
Peace, failed to prevent war. This war is man's new fall, 
his greatest fall since Christ came to save him. The whole 
drama of this war states in terrible terms the unchristianity 
of Christendom. It measures again the awful task that 
Christ undertook when he came to redeem mankind and called 
man to the establishment of a Divine Kingdom by love and 
sacrifice. Do we ask again with new urgency: "After all, 
is Christ's program for human society practical? Is he, 
indeed, the answer to the world's need? If he is, perhaps, 
the answer to the need of the individual human soul, can 
states be conducted under this Christ constitution? Is it not 
possible to govern the world by love?" By dreadnought 
and submarine, by Zeppelin and aeroplane, by mortar and 
howitzer; with torpedo and bomb, with shell and shrapnel, 
with dynamite and poisonous gas, turned against women and 
children, as well as fighting men, with a skill never equaled 
and a cruelty unsurpassed, the nations are answering with a 
thunderous "No!" "No!" say these voices of Hell, "There 
is no such thing as human love and brotherhood." 

Christendom has yet to learn what the application of the 
principles of Christ demands in relation not only to personal, 
but also to social, industrial, and national lives. 

What, then, is the lesson of this collapse of civilization. 
Religious-minded people think that it is a new revelation of 
God. This war is, in fact, the most apocalyptic thing in all 
history. It has broken the entail of the past. Modern 
European history has been said to date from the Napoleonic 
Wars. Our new modern history will date from 1914. We 
are now laying its foundations. The war has thus brought 
the world a magnificent opportunity to make a new beginning. 

History teaches us that these moral catastrophes all have 
their causes. They are prepared by the acts of men and 
nations. Wise old Doctor Holmes said : "War is no accident, 
but an inevitable result of long incubating causes ; inevitable 
as the cataclysms that swept away those monstrous births of 
primeval nations." If this be true, the occurrences of the 

— 4 — 



last few weeks, the intensification of the strife, the enlarge- 
ment of its area and the tremendous issues, should make men 
look to the larger facts which lie behind these events. 

For several decades our universities have been absorbed 
with the evolutionary philosophy. Up to the outbreak of 
this war, many of us had been taught to think of the future 
of mankind in terms of evolution, that is, that progress is 
made by slow and gradual steps only, or, as one has said, 
"by the aggregation of infinitesimal increments of advance." 
This way of looking at human things was due, of course, to 
the triumph of the evolutionary theory in natural science. 
Since the progress of Nature is so inconceivably slow, how 
absurd it is, they said, for us to be impatient with social 
wrong. It was unscientific to expect human society to im- 
prove any faster. It Nature takes so long to evolve the soul, 
how absurd for the theologians to teach that the soul can 
be new-born in a moment. 

The historians of human thought will trace the great and 
all pervading influence of the theory of Darwin on the whole 
realm of social, political, and religious thinking and action. 
This newest materialism has blunted the edge of our religious 
thinking, and is largely responsible for the terrible error 
from which we are suffering today. But its end is near. 
Even before this cataclysm, we were coming to see that 
evolution by infinitesimal increments, while perhaps true up 
to a certain point in nature, was not a complete account of 
human life. There is much in science, as well as in history, 
that cannot be accounted for by its formula. De Vries teaches 
us now that evolution is not sufficient to account for many 
facts of plant life, and the bacteriologists tell us that it does 
not explain many phenomena in their field. All we are learn- 
ing about the nature of matter leads us to the same con- 
clusion. In other words, tremendous leaps have been 
discovered in nature which contradict the theory of Darwin. 
We believe now that there is in human history a revolu- 
tionary, as well as an evolutionary, element. Just as we 
believe that there are perfectly new personalities being born 
in the world which are more than rearrangements of the 
characteristics of their ancestors, so we believe that there 
have been clean, new beginnings, tremendous and sudden 
cataclysms in human society. Is not this one of them? 

— 5 — 



Why do we believe in revolution as well as evolution? 
Most men still believe that they are free. Then the moment 
we give a place to human freedom, we realize that the theory 
of evolution by infinitesimal degrees is insufficient to describe 
human life. We borrow evolution from nature, but nature's 
categories cannot explain human nature. When we come to 
study men, we must use a new term, we must speak of educa- 
tion. And education is an entirely different process from 
evolution. If this be so, the apocalypse, the revelation of 
truth through revolution, is a part of God's plan for the 
education of man. 

We must believe, I say, that man is by his very nature 
endowed with freedom. If man chooses, he can go wrong. 
Sometimes he goes wrong for years together, sometimes 
whole nations go wrong for decades. Thus begins the down- 
ward process. See how it evolves. Evil appears to triumph 
everywhere ; the wicked prosper more than the righteous, and 
the fool says in his heart that the wrong works better than 
the right. 

Under all discouragement, however, the fight for right- 
eousness goes on. There is in this world such a thing as 
judgment, and all this time judgment is accumulated. When 
men have been outraged until they will stand it no longer, 
then comes a revolution. Darkness falls. The wind of 
death wraps the nations in its wings. Civilizations sink 
in blood. 

Now once more men see what sin means. All the evil 
hidden during the years is dragged out into the light of 
eternity. It is shown once again that evil does not succeed in 
God's world. The old Hebrew philosophy is again shown 
to be eternally right, and men realize that it is only another 
apocalypse, a moment of judgment. 

But history teaches us that such cataclysms are not the 
end, they are the beginning. There is in them not merely a 
possibility, there is a promise of progress as sudden and 
immense as was the coming of the judgment. Time and 
time again there has come, breaking out of the wreck of the 
past, one of these great forward leaps in history. May we 
I'ot in this dark hour look forward to such a dawn ? 

Moreover, what we hope for is not simply a zig-zagging, 
slow-climbing, evolutionary path up the height of civilization 

— 6 — 



from which we have fallen, but it is the beginning of a new 
era on a new moral basis. 

Thus it is, that as our eyes grow accustomed to the night, 
we see through the darkness the eternal stars pointing the 
true way of human progress, which is the way, not of evolu- 
tion, but of revolution — of revolution directed by an all- 
powerful and righteous God, who is also a God of Mercy 
and of Love. 

What we have now to look forward to is a new epoch 
which God has initiated by his judgment, and in which he will 
regenerate and heal, if men will only turn to him. Not 
evolution, therefore, but the judgment and the mercy of God 
are the ideas which come to us today with new power and 
hope, as we look through the symbolism of this apocalypse 
into the eternal truth. 

Will men only respond to God's summons in this judg- 
ment? Never in history has man had such an opportunity 
to learn what pride and war mean. Twenty-five million men 
will probably experience it in their own bodies and souls, and 
perhaps a billion other men, women, and little children will 
suffer its horrors with them before this war is ended. And, 
alas, the conclusion of the war will not end this suffering. 
Unborn children will bear its burdens and sorrows for ages 
to come. Will men learn the lesson and pass from the con- 
demnation of war to the condemnation of the spirit that makes 
war? Will they see the revelation, will they then receive it 
and learn its lesson? Under the tuition of His Spirit, we 
believe they will. This is God's apocalypse. Again a 
tremendous, forgotten Biblical truth is receiving transcendent 
expression. Sin is working death. 

What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? On 
what ground may we hope for the progress of humanity ? 
Only on the ground that God rules. Only on the ground 
that God so loved the world that he gave His Son to save it. 

No man ever drank deeper of the sorrows of war, no 
soldier ever rose to grander heights of human service than 
General Lee. I give you this statement of his faith in 
Providence and his hope for the future of mankind. Speak- 
ing to his people in the time of their defeat and despair, 
General Lee uttered these memorable words containing the 
essence of our Christian philosophy : 

— 7 — 



"My experience of men has neither disposed me to think 
worse of them, nor indisposed me to serve them ; nor, in 
spite of failures, which I lament; of errors, which I now see 
and acknowledge, or, of the present aspect of affairs, do I 
despair of the future. The truth is this : The march of 
Providence is so slow, and our desires so impatient, the work 
of progress is so immense, and our means of aiding it so 
feeble, the life of humanity is so long, and that of the indi- 
vidual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advanc- 
ing wave, and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches 
us to hope," 

Does history give us hope today ? Has Christianity failed 
to influence the lives of men and nations? Have these 
twenty centuries counted for nought ? Let us see. 

When we ask in what respect the modern world is an 
improvement upon the ancient, a common answer is that the 
development of the physical forces and their applications in 
production, transportation, and the other conveniences of life 
are the great achievements. If this is all , we are not sur- 
prised that we have made no progress toward the abolition 
of war, for the development of physical force only creates 
more wealth and contributes little to man's spiritual life. 
Have we then made no spiritual progress in modern times? 
The evidence of our material civilization, exhibited in manu- 
factures, commerce, and trade, and in the comforts of modern 
life, are on the surface. It is not so easy to prove our moral 
progress. The spiritual growth of man is necessarily slower. 
It is only through labor and sorrow that the soul is saved. 
The battle of the spirit against the flesh is terrible, in nations 
as well as in individuals. Often when a new fortress of 
righteousness seems about to be taken by the white-robed 
warriors of the soul, the black hordes of the elemental 
passions burst forth, and drive them back to the plains where 
the battle has to be begun all over. 

But in spite of all these losses and discouragements, it is 
still true, is it not, that the great glory of the modern world 
is the development of a sense of humanity, and the realization 
of the brotherhood of man? Slowly, and through terrible 
struggles, man is learning that all men "should brothers be," 
and that "Above all nations is humanity." 



This war itself is giving many opportunities for the further 
development of this spirit, proving anew its vitality and power 
to heal. It is true, is it not, that while on the one side there 
never was such a cruel war, on the other there never were 
so many manifestations of the sympathy of man for man? 
The work of the Red Cross and of the Relief Commissions 
shows that even during this terrible time the spirit of humanity 
is growing. Never in history has there been such an over- 
whelming outpouring of generous aid and tender sympathy, 
regardless of the race, rank, and nationality of the suffering. 
This is the true neutrality ; this is the one encouraging thing 
in these sad months. Strange as it may seem at such a time, 
the whole world, as well as America, is developing an ever 
stronger sympathy. 

We are deeply concerned as to the influence of this 
catastrophe upon these young men. While it is undoubtedly 
true that war, through service to the sick and wounded, con- 
tributes to our spiritual development, its influence upon the 
young is, in all other respects, vicious. The war spirit 
exploits physical prowess and martial success, glorifying the 
heroism of the soldier, the professional destroyer of human 
life. We are bound to admire self-sacrificing courage 
wherever found, and nothing perhaps appeals to the young 
like the heroism of battle. 

But the mere warrior is not the highest type of hero. 
Wordsworth, it is said, wrote his ''Happy Warrior" as a 
protest against the attention bestowed upon the military char- 
acters developed in the French war, and especially against 
the praise heaped upon Lord Nelson, whose public life was 
even then stained by a great crime. 

"Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he 

That every man in arms should wish to be?" * * * 

"It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought 

Among the tasks of real life, ****** 

Makes his moral being his prime care ; * * 

More skilful in self-knowledge, even more pure, 

As tempted more; more able to endure, 

As more exposed to sufifering and distress; 

Thence, also, more alive to tenderness." 

But the love of fight is an instinct inherited from the 
countless generations 'of men. Through physical contest 
largely, man has attained to his present position, and it is to 

— 9 — 



this love of contest that the statesmen and the generals appeal 
when they call men to war. We are dealing here with some- 
thing original, natural, universal, and, I believe, also inde- 
structible, — a force that lies deeper in human nature than 
ambition or love of self. 

Now since this love of warfare is one of the strongest 
natural instincts, it is hopeless to undertake its total sup- 
pression. The impulse is closely related to the instinct of 
self-preservation, and to those of hunger and of sex, which, 
we know, can never be extirpated so long as the race lives. 
The problem, then, is not how to eradicate this love of con- 
test, but how to direct it into proper channels. 

Just as we have utilized the great natural forces for 
useful purposes, so we must direct these great natural instincts 
in such a way that they shall become humanizing and creative, 
instead of cruel and destructive. Lightning was regarded by 
primitive man as purely destructive. Jove cast his bolts in 
anger and for the punishment of men; but electricity, first 
caught from the clouds by Franklin, has been thoroughly 
mastered by Volta, Faraday, and Edison, until now it is ac- 
cepted as the most serviceable instrument of human welfare, 
operating our machinery, lighting our habitations, and flash- 
ing our thoughts around the world. 

Precisely in this manner we have conquered some of these 
primordial instincts. Hunger, a brutal passion in the savage, 
has been at least partially refined, until now all civilized men 
eat and drink without fighting, and some of us even in accord- 
ance with the laws of dietetics. So, too, the passion of sex, 
which among early men wrought frightful brutality, and 
which has been in all ages the curse of civilization, has now 
become among moral people the greatest constructive force of 
human society — ^bringing together the family, which is the 
unit of society, the unit of government, the unit of church, 
and the beginning of Heaven on Earth. 

In similar manner, we must civilize this terrible passion 
for war and convert this natural fighting instinct from bar- 
barous and destructive uses to humane and beneficent ends. 
The fierce impulses that stir nations to war must be applied 
to mercy, instead of to misery, to rescue, instead of to ruin, 
to life, instead of to death. 

— 10 — 



It cannot be true that there is no better employment for 
the patriotism of one people than the destruction of some 
other people. Why not sacrifice ourselves for human im- 
provement rather than for human destruction? "Much 
remains to conquer still," as Milton said to Cromwell, "Peace 
has her victories no less renowned than War." Surely there 
is enough misery in this world for us to fight without adding 
the misery of war. Why not, then, conscript our young 
men for an army to make war on the evils of our present 
society, to lessen the toil and pain, the hardness and the agony 
which nature imposes on her children? Heroism not less 
splendid, contests not less perilous than those on the blood- 
stained fields of Europe, await men everywhere in the fields 
of science and of service. 

These humanitarian tasks may be unromantic — they are 
usually unexciting — but they often try men's hearts as 
severely as any battle. The courage of the soldier is strongly 
sustained by companionship. Whether marching into battle 
or lying in a trench, he has the support of his fellows and 
looks forward to promotion and to glory. Many plain men 
are daily dying in solitude for humanity. The professional 
soldier leads a heathful and routine life which may last for 
years, and has in his whole career only one day, or perhaps 
one hour, of danger, while some of our ordinary workers 
are daily risking their lives without any suspicion that they 
are acting the part of heroes. The miner enters each day 
into the tunnel where he may be crushed, smothered, or blown 
up; the riveter works at his perilous task high in the air on 
the skeleton of a many-storied building; the physician faces 
disease without fear striving to overcome some great 
epidemic; the explorer tramps hundreds of miles through 
trackless swamps and forests filled with wild men and beasts ; 
the missionary seeks some far-a-way land and commits the life 
of his family to a savage people whom he seeks to save — 
none of these think they are heroes. They are only doing 
their duty. Such men, as well as those who fight our physical 
battles, are true soldiers. 

"Dream not helm and harness 

The sign of valor true; 
Peace hath higher tests of manhood 

Than battle ever knew." 

— 11 — 



The man who stood at the head of my class at the Uni- 
versity, a fine classical scholar, immediately on graduation, 
asked the American Board of Foreign Missions to send him 
to some needy place that no one else would take. It was 
important at the time, for the sake of humanity, that a station 
be established in that far-a-way corner of Alaska inside the 
Arctic circle, known as Cape Prince of Wales. Harry 
Thornton accepted the task and went there with his young 
wife to establish a mission for a small tribe of uncivilized 
people. After laboring six years without seeing a man of 
his own race, he was assassinated by some of the people he 
was trying to help. But before he died, Thornton had started 
a school and a church which have since become the center 
of civilization for all that region. 

Never was there a nobler band of soldiers, than the small 
one organized by Major Reed of Virginia to study yellow 
fever in Cuba. Reed and his companions, Carroll and 
Lazear, accomplished their appointed task and then gave up 
their lives. No deed of battle ever surpassed the self-sacrifice 
of Lazear, who deliberately let mosquitoes settle on his hand 
and infect him with yellow fever. He was willing to sacri- 
fice himself, in order that the world might be delivered from 
a scourge which had caused the death of more Americans 
than all our wars. 

It is not necessary, either, to go to foreign lands in order 
to give one's life in this way. Howard Taylor Ricketts, of 
Rush Medical College, Chicago, and Thomas Brown Mc- 
Clintic, of the University of Virginia, both sacrificed their 
lives in similar manner in order to discover the cause and 
cure of Rocky Mountain fever. 

The present war has also brought forth heroes of science 
and humanity. The war against typhus in Serbia has been 
conducted by a noble band of physicians, many of them 
Americans. James F. Donnelly, of Brooklyn, and Ernest 
P. Magruder, of Washington, both officers of the American 
Red Cross, have already given their lives for this cause. We, 
of Cincinnati, may well be proud of the heroism of our fellow 
townsman, Doctor Paul Morton Lane, who, after recovering 
from the typhus contracted in Serbia, has returned to help 
that afflicted people. 

— 12 — 



But it is not necessary to be a soldier or army surgeon to 
give your life for humanity. Malaria and insects, disease 
and dirt, are just as dangerous as ball and shrapnel, ignorance 
and superstition. Brutality and savagery are often as firmly 
intrenched and as difficult to dislodge from their fortresses as 
maxims and howitzers behind barbed wire. It is a brave 
thing to be a soldier, but it is a still braver thing to be a savior. 

Shall not the time come, therefore, when the application 
of this fighting instinct to the purposes of war will be con- 
sidered a base prostitution of a noble force in human nature, 
a condition from which true men, with horror, will turn to 
devote themselves to the real wars of humanity? When 
that time does come, as it surely will, the famous names of 
history will not be those of great generals who have destroyed 
hostile armies, but those of the great leaders of thought who 
have directed the forces of science and of education for the 
healing and the salvation of the nations. 

What, then, is the duty of our colleges and universities? 
We found that there was nothing wrong in fighting, provided 
you were fighting the right enemy, for the right cause, with 
proper weapons, and in a decent way. The problem before 
us is to apply this fighting spirit to the great tasks of science, 
medicine, education, religion, and mercy. Hundreds of 
noble causes call for thousands of trained men and women. 
Our universities and colleges should then constitute the 
general staff of this world army of philanthropy carrying on 
campaigns for the development of all human resources and for 
the destruction of the diseases of body and soul. 

Colleges and universities are not merely places for study. 
They should be the brains and the hearts to direct the world 
in action. As Milton said : 

"I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised 
and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but 
slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be 
run for." 

Let the colleges, then, declare a war for civilization ; let 
them call to the colors of humanity the heroic youth of the 
world and join battle with the forces of ignorance and 
barbarism. 

What shall be the part of our country in bringing in this 
"Better Era?" Some enthusiasts declare that we should be 

— 13 — 



the arbiter of the nations in this terrible crisis. This sug- 
gests a boastful spirit. By all means let us be peace-makers, 
if we may, but not Pharisees, thanking God that we are not 
as other men are. Let us first confess our own sins of 
aggression and cruelty. Let us be grateful for our situation 
between the seas, for our institutions, for our freedom, for 
our ideals, and, especially, for the privilege of ministering to 
those suffering in the war. 

If this be our spirit, the opportunity for service to human- 
ity will be even greater after than during the war. We hope 
it is the mission of America to show the nations how to live 
together like brethren in a great federation. If we only keep 
our hands clean of innocent blood, we may help to make 
peace .among the nations. If we only keep our conscience 
clear, America may become the conscience of the world, and 
propagate the ideals of right over might, of law over force, 
of service over conquest. 

But America can best serve mankind at this awful time 
by keeping right herself. The higher our standards of na- 
tional conduct, the greater will be our power in the "Better 
Era." In this way only can we prepare our nation to dis- 
charge the task imposed upon her as the champion of hu- 
manity. Not for our own salvation, not for our own glory, 
but for humanity's sake, let us, therefore, now reconsecrate 
ourselves to truth and righteousness. 

Gentlemen of the graduating class, as I stand before you 
this morning when you are about to leave these halls and 
enter upon the war of life, I am deeply impressed with the 
thought that it is to you and to those like you, in this and 
other lands, that the civilized world is looking to carry on 
this work for truth, for righteousness, and for peace. The 
students of today must save the world of tomorrow. May 
you all be knights of "A Better Era." 



14 



